Welcome to the Winobloggers webpage! Students and professors from different universities meet to discuss their findings on Winogradsky columns they constructed!
We learn how to formulate hypotheses, observe, comment, ask and reply to questions related to our scientific experiments.

Winogradksy columns

'In the field of observation, chance only favors the prepared mind' Pasteur 1854

Blog posts

Monday, 16 March 2015

Cadiz, 4B: WINOGRANDSKY/1-2 week results

Monday 16th
March

Winograndsky
column, 1st and 2nd week results (group 4-B)

Our group
is composed by Mario Pérez, Mercedes Martinez and me, Paula Sánchez. We study Biotechnology
at the University in Cádiz, Spain.

Our teacher
of Microbiology asked us to do a project that consisted in analyse what happens
when you leave sediments of a river near university (Rio San Pedro) in a bottle
for some weeks. We accepted the challenge and made the Winograndsky column on
Tuesday 3rd of March.

For that we
used an Aquarius bottle because we
had to fill it up with sandy beach sediment from Rio San Pedro, as I said
before.

Before filling
the bottle with that, we mixed the sediment with some starch, in order to
enrich the mixture. We added some motor oil and copper sulphate also. We didn’t
think motor oil could make life inside the bottle die, but despite that fact,
we continued with the project.

We moved
the mix (sediment and enrichments) in a recipient because we wanted it to be so
homogeneous and then we added some water.

Lately the
mix was transfered to the bottle and it occupied 3/4 of it approximately.

During the
firsts days the bottle remained similar, as we didn’t appreciate any change. On
Saturday and Sunday we realized the mix was darker than before, maybe because
of the motor oil.

Then the little
worms the sediment had looked dead, we think it could be because of the motor
oil also as it is a contaminant product and the tap water we added to the
bottle became black.

It is
important to mention that the bottle resides in an illuminated and opened area
but the sunbeams can’t reach it directly, so the microorganisms the bottle
could have can live as the gradient of temperature doesn’t reach 20ºC.